381. High License the Monopoly of Abomination

High License the Monopoly of Abomination

Mat_27:6 : ’93It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood.’94

For sixteen dollars and ninety-six cents Judas Iscariot had sold Christ. Under a thrust of conscience or in disgust that he had not made a more lucrative thing out of it, he pitches the rattling shekels on the pavement. What to do with the conscience money, is the question. Some say, ’93Put it into the treasury.’94 Others say, ’93It is not right to do that, because we have always had an understanding that blood money, or a revenue obtained by the sale of human life, must not be used for governmental or religious purposes.’94 So they decide to take the money and purchase a place to bury paupers; picking out a rough and useless piece of ground all covered over with the broken ware of an adjoining pottery, they set apart the first potters’92 field. So you see the relation of my text when it says, ’93It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood.’94

We are at a point in reformatory movements in this country where it is proposed to restrain or control or stop the traffic of ardent spirits by compelling the merchant thereof to pay a large sum, say, five hundred dollars or one thousand dollars as a license. It is said that this will have a tendency to close up all the small drinkeries which curse our cities, and only a few men can afford to sell intoxicating drink. This money raised by a high license will help support the poorhouses, where there are widows and orphans sent there by the dissipations of husbands and fathers. Do you not see? So we shall make one hand wash the other. This high tax will help support the prisons in which men are incarcerated for committing crimes while drunk. Do you not see? This high tax will help support the Court of Oyer and Terminer, whose judges and attorneys and constables and juries and police stations and courtrooms find their chief employment in the arraignment, trial, and condemnation of those who offend the law while in a state of insobriety. Do you not see? How any man or woman in favor of the great temperance reform can be so hoodwinked as not to understand that this high-licensed movement is the surrender of all the temperance reformation for which good men and women have been struggling for the last sixty years, is to me an amazement that eclipses everything.

My subject is, ’93High License, the Monopoly of Abomination.’94 Do you not realize, as by mathematical demonstration, that the one result of this high-licensed movement, and the one result of the closing of small establishments’97if that were the result’97and the opening of a few large establishments, will be to make rum-selling and rum-drinking highly respectable? These drinkeries in Brooklyn and New York and all our cities are so disgusting that a man will not risk his reputation by going in them; and if a young man should be found coming out from one of those low establishments he would lose his place in the store. Now, suppose all these small establishments are closed up and that then you open the palaces of inebriation down on the avenues. It is not the rookeries of alcoholism that do the worst work; they are only the last stopping places on the road to death. Where did that bloated, ulcerous, wheezing wretch that staggers out of a rum-hole get his habits started? At glittering restaurant or barroom of first-class hotel, where it was fashionable to go. Ah! my friends, it seems to me the disposition is to stop these small establishments, which are only the rash on the skin of the body politic, and then to gather all the poison and the ichorous pus into a few great carbuncles which mean death. I say, give us the rash rather than the carbuncles.

Here you will have a splendid liquor establishment. Masterpieces of painting on the wall. Cut-glass on silver platter. Upholstery like a Turkish harem. Uniformed servants to open the door, uniformed servants to take your hat and cane. Adjoining rooms with luxurious divan on which you can recline when taken mysteriously ill after too much champagne, cognac, or old Otard. All the phantasmagoria and bewitchment of art thrown around this Herod of massacre, this Moloch of consumed worshipers, this Juggernaut of crushed millions. Do you not see that this high-license movement strikes at the heart of the best homes in America? that it proposes the fattest lambs for its sacrifice? that it is at war with the most beautiful domestic circles in America? Tell it to all the philanthropists who are trying to make the world better, and let journalists tell it by pen and by type that this day in the presence of my Maker and my Judge I stamp on this high-license movement as the monopoly of abomination. It proposes to pave with honor, to pillar with splendor, and guard with monopolistic advantage a business, which has made the ground hollow under England, Ireland, Scotland, and America with the catacombs of slaughtered drunkards.

I am opposed to this high license because it is anti-American, it is anti-common-sense, it is anti-demonstrated facts, and it is anti-Christian. Our revolutionary fathers wrote first with pen and then with sword’97first in black ink, and then in red ink’97that all men are equal before the law. Impartiality written on the Declaration of Independence, on the Constitution of the United States, and over the door of our State and National capitols. Now, how then dare you propose for five hundred dollars or one thousand dollars to let one man sell sweetened dynamite, while you deny to his fellow the right, because he cannot raise more than one hundred dollars or more than fifty dollars or cannot raise anything? Are the small dealers in this festive liquid to have no rights? I plead for equal rights, the first American doctrine. I plead for the rights of these men who are doing a small, prudent, economical business in selling extract of logwood, strychnine, and blue vitriol! What right have you to say to these wealthy men standing beside their great conflagration of temptation, ’93Go ahead,’94 while you deny the poor fellows in the traffic the right so much as to strike a lucifer match?

Now, this high-license movement is the property qualification in the most offensive shape. Why do you not carry it out in other things? Why do you not stop all these bakers until the bakers can pay a one-thousand-dollar license? Why do you not shut up all the butchers’92 shops until the butchers can pay one thousand dollars or five hundred dollars? Why do you not stop these thread-and-needle stores and the small drygoods establishments, except that a man pay five hundred dollars or one thousand dollars? ’93Oh,’94 you say, ’93that is different.’94 How is it different? ’93Well,’94 you say, ’93the sale of bread and meat and clothes does no damage, while the sale of whisky does damage.’94 Ah, my brother, you have surrendered the whole subject! If rum-selling is right, let all have the right; and if it is wrong, five hundred dollars or one thousand dollars are only a bribe to government to give to a few men a privilege which it denies to the great masses of the people. Why do you carry out this idea of licensing only those who can pay a large license? give them all the privilege.

’93Oh,’94 say some people, ’93you cannot execute a prohibitory law, and, therefore, you had better take this high license as a compromise.’94 And there are people who say, ’93Half a loaf of bread is better than no bread at all.’94 Well, that depends entirely upon whether the half loaf is poisoned or not. You say half a pound of butter is better than no butter. That depends upon whether it is oleomargarine or not! Here is a bridge over a roaring stream. A freshet in the night-time sweeps away half the railroad bridge. The first half of the bridge stands solidly. It is half-past eleven o’92clock at night, and the express train is coming. The watchman stands there with a lantern. He sees the bridge sound at that end, and the waves the lantern, ’93All is well,’94 and at forty miles the hour the midnight express train sweeps on, and having passed the first half of the bridge’97crash, crash! Two hundred souls gone into eternity. Better have had no bridge at all; then the watchman would have swung his lantern of warning. Is half a bridge better than no bridge?

So they propose to compromise this matter. They say a prohibitory law cannot be executed, and, therefore, we had better not have any such law on the statute book. Will you tell me, my friends, which one of our laws is fully executed. We have a law against Sabbath-breaking. Millions of people break that law every Sunday. We have laws against blasphemy. Sometimes the air is lurid with imprecation. We have laws against theft, but you have highwaymen and burglars filling your jails and penitentiaries, and thousands of people outside of jail who ought to be inside. You have laws against murder, yet we have always men in our jails for murder, and there are scores of them in the United States. Now, why not throw overboard these laws, if they are not executed fully, and let us give for a high license to a few men all the privilege of swearing and stealing and murder? Let us have a high license for theft. Get ready your excise commissioners. We will have five thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars high license for theft. We must somehow put down these small criminals that are stealing door-mats and postage-stamps and chocolate-drops. For high license we will give to a few men the privilege of running off with fifty thousand dollars of a National Bank, of watering the stock in a railroad company, taking two hundred and fifty thousand dollars at one clip. Now, I shall have this license very high, say ten thousand dollars for theft, and in that way we shall put to an end all these sneak thieves and two-penny scoundrels and wharf-rats and all hail to the million-dollar rascals. You will never put down theft in this country until you give a few people for a high license all the privilege of stealing.

Then there is the evil of blasphemy. Let us for a high license, say ten thousand dollars, gather a hundred men in these cities, men of the hottest tempers and the fieriest tongue and the most spiteful against God and decency, and add to them the Speaker of one of our State Legislatures, whose address to the Legislature last week was so full of oaths and imprecations that the printers, who never swear themselves, had to put blanks all through the speech to show where the oaths came in. Having gathered this precious group to do all the blasphemy of the country at high license, give them full sweep; and then just let us extinguish all these small swearers, who never have any genius at swearing, and who always swear on a small scale, and who never get beyond ’93by George!’94 or, ’93my stars!’94 or, ’93darn it!’94 Extirpation for all small swearers. You will never put down blasphemy in this country except by high license.

And the sin of murder. Why, your law against it is a failure. Murder on Long Island, murder in Illinois, murder in Pennsylvania, murder all over. It is almost impossible to convict one of the desperadoes. He proves an alibi right away. Or he did it under emotional insanity. Court-house full of sympathizers, and when he is cleared the crowd follow him down the street thinking he ought to be sent to Congress! Your law against murder is a failure. Now, we have got to stop these clumsy assassins who kill people with car-hooks and Paris green and dull knives, and having a high license, say ten thousand dollars or twenty thousand dollars, give to a few men the privilege of genteelly and skilfully and gracefully putting their victims out of their worldly misfortunes. You will never stop murder in this country until you put a high license upon it and let a few men do all the killing. But, all irony aside, you see that if rum-selling is right, we all ought to have the right; and if it is wrong, five million dollars, paid down in hard cash for one license, ought to purchase no immunity.

High license is anti-common-sense. You know very well one business has no right to despoil other businesses. A manufacturer went down South and established himself in Georgia. Somebody asked him why he built his establishment there. He said, ’93Because they voted to have no license here.’94 That honest manufacturer knew what you and I ought to know, that the liquor traffic is in antagonism with every other business. If the millions of dollars which go into that business went for lawful and healthful kinds of business there would come to the agricultural and manufacturing and commercial interests of this country a boom of prosperity a hundred and fifty per cent, greater than we have ever had.

Oh, that the working people of America understood that it is time for them by their votes to keep at home the drivelling pot-house politicians who vote to uphold this rum traffic. Do you know that if you have two dollars as wages now a day, you would have four dollars; if you have one thousand dollars salary you would have two thousand dollars; if you have ten thousand dollars income now you would have twenty thousand dollars? The rum traffic puts its clutch this moment upon the neck of every merchant, mechanic, artist, and farmer in America. You pay for its destructive work by your honest sweat and by the deprivation of your households of many comforts. After a few more thousand of our homes are despoiled by the rum traffic, after a few more thousand broken hearts, after a few more thousand of the noblest intellects of this age are sacrificed, after a few more years the distilleries shall have insulted the heavens with their uprolling stench, the tide will turn, and all good people rising up will lay hold of the strength of Almighty God and hurl into the perdition from which it smoked up this sweltering and putrefying curse of nations.

I have to tell you that this high-license movement is antagonized by all the demonstrated facts in the case. I am amazed to hear intelligent men talk as though high license were a new plan that we are to try just once. It is an old carcass. It first died in Missouri; then it died in Kansas, the second death, and it has been tried over and over again, and has always been a flat and disgusting failure. Men of America, hear that! It was tried in Iowa, a thousand-dollar-license. A prominent paper of Iowa says: ’93Experiments being made with high license in Iowa as a temperance method are fast proving what a cheat it is. Des Moines has tried a thousand-dollar license only to find it has increased the number of its saloons and the daily cases of drunkenness. Other cities in Iowa have tried it with similar result.

It was tried in Nebraska, a thousand-dollar license, under what was called the Slocum Law. A prominent citizen was asked as to what he thought had been the effect of that high license. His reply was: ’93You ask, has a high license diminished drunkenness? Not in the slightest degree. Drunkenness is steadily on the increase. This vice, as all other vices which government fosters, grows continuously. High license, as far as diminishing drunkenness is concerned, does nothing of the kind. Mark this well. I would repeat in thunderous tones, if I could, it does nothing of the kind. Gambling, consequent upon high license, has fearfully increased. The saloon-keeper must have in many cases a gambling annex in order to make his business pay a profit under the high-license system. This vice is making rapid progress, and much of this increase is directly traceable to high license.’94

My friends, the hardest blow the temperance reformation has had in this century has been in the fact that some reformers have halted under the delusion of this high-license movement. You know what it is. It is the white flag of truce sent out from alcoholism to prohibition to make the battle pause long enough to get the army of decanters and demijohns better organized. Away with that flag of truce, or I will fire on it. Between these two armies there can be no truce. On the one side are God and sobriety and the best interests of the world, and on the other side is the sworn enemy of all righteousness; and either rum must be defeated or the Church of God and civilization. What are you trying to compromise with? Oh, this black destroying archangel of all diabolism, putting one wing to the Pacific, putting the other wing to the Atlantic coast, its filthy claws clutching into the torn and bleeding heart-strings of the nation as it cries out, ’93How long, O Lord, how long?’94 Compromise with it! You had better compromise with the panther in his jungle, with the cyclone in its flight, with an Egyptian plague as it blotches an empire, with Apollyon, for whom this evil is recruiting officer, quartermaster, and commander-in-chief. Let us fight this battle out on the old line, for victory is coming as surely as right is right and wrong is wrong and falsehood is false and truth is truth and God is God. Can it be that you are so deaf that you cannot hear in the distance the rumbling of the oncoming chariots of victory? I tell the politicians of America, I tell the leaders of our beautiful Republican party and of our glorious Democracy that the temperance movement is going to hold the balance of power in this country, and decide who shall be the mayors, the governors, and the congressmen, and the presidents. I expect to live to see a President of the United States elected on a Prohibition platform. Better get off the track before the morning express train comes down with the women’92s temperance societies and the Sons of Temperance and the Good Samaritans and the Good Templars and the long train of Christians and philanthropists and reformers. Clear the track! The cowcatcher will be all piled up with smashed decanters and the staves of beer-barrels and the splinters of high-license platforms and the rails with people who sat on the fence and all the machinations and briberies and outrages of all Christendom. The time will come when there will be only ten decanters left, and they will be set up at the end of an alley like tenpins, and some reformer will take the round ball of prohibition, and he will give one roll, but it will be a ten-strike.

This subject looked at from the side of worldly reform is bright; but looked at from the side of Christian reform, it is absolutely certain. God is going to destroy drunkenness. Is there a man who doubts that God is stronger than the devil?

Blucher came up just before night and saved the day at Waterloo. At four o’92clock in the afternoon it looked very bad for the English. Generals Ponsonby and Picton fallen. Sabers broken, flags surrendered, Scotch Grays annihilated. Only forty-two men left out of the German brigade. The English army falling back and falling back. Napoleon rubbed his hands together and said, ’93Aha! aha! we’92ll teach that little Englishman a lesson. Ninety chances out of a hundred are in our favor. Magnificent! magnificent!’94 He even sent messages to Paris to say he had won the day. But before sundown Blucher came up, and he who had been the conqueror of Austerlitz became the victim of Waterloo. That name which had shaken all Europe and filled even America with apprehension, that name went down, and Napoleon, muddy and hatless and crazed with his disasters, was found feeling for the stirrup of a horse that he might mount and resume the contest.

Well, my friends, alcoholism is imperial, and it is a conqueror, and there are good people who say the night of national overthrow is coming, and that it is almost night. But before sundown the Conqueror of earth and heaven will ride in on the white horse, and alcoholism, which has had its Austerlitz of triumph, shall have its Waterloo of defeat. Alcoholism having lost its crown, the grizzly and cruel breaker of human hearts crazed with the disaster, will be found feeling in vain for the stirrup on which to remount its foaming charger. ’93So, O Lord, let thine enemies perish!’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage